Real-time sharing app pulled from YouTube

Billed as an experiment that has inspired

YouTube announced this week it has done away with its Realtime Toolbar – a feature which was meant to aid the finding of new videos on the site.

Instead of announcing the pulling of the feature on its blog, the news was spilled on the site's bug report forum by 'Liz' from the YouTube team.

"We've seen some of you wondering what occurred to the Realtime Toolbar," explained Liz.

"The Realtime Toolbar was recently retired and is no longer an available feature on YouTube.

"We were excited to release and experiment with Realtime and it has inspired us for new features on YouTube in the future."

Improving the YouTube community

But all is not lost, however, with Liz noting: "We look forward to introducing many new features in the coming months and are sharing them with you all.

"Many thanks to those of you who used Realtime and for your feedback to us on this feature – your suggestions and input help the Team shape the site and determine what should be developed to further improve the YouTube community."

The Realtime Toolbar won't be missed by many as it was an invite-only scheme. In a statement YouTube explained that the feature was part of its TestTube service and while "some social features, like Auto-Share, gain a lot of interest and adoption within the YouTube community, others do not."